A class exploration of the effects on individuals and societies of the use and abuse of power

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As the youngest billionaire in the world at only 27 years of age and ranking 9th in Forbes most powerful person, Mark Zuckerberg is in a position of power over all 800 million Facebook users worldwide. He is a computer programmer and internet entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook 7 years ago and has made it into the popular site it is today.

While studying at Harvard, Zuckerberg came up with this great idea of a social networking site that would be able to keep everyone on his campus in touch via the internet. It was originally ‘only a Harvard thing’ but since then it has spread rapidly. What he planned to only affect his classmates has turned into a multi-billion dollar, world-wide phenomenon. On February 4, 2004, he launched ‘thefacebook.com’ from his Harvard University dorm which was later changed to just ‘facebook.com’. He’s now the CEO and president of the site which has now become one of the biggest websites in the world. It is estimated that he currently has a net worth of $17.5 billion which is only expected to rise in years to come.

Some people believe he stole the idea of Facebook from the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss who also went to Harvard. They sued Zuckerberg for $140 million claiming that he broke a verbal agreement and that they were the ones who came up with the idea of a social networking site that they were going to call ‘ConnectU’. Although, it wouldn’t be the first of kind because there were already other social networking sites like MySpace around at that time.

He has built everything in his company from scratch and has earnt all of the power that he’s gained from it, managing not to abuse it either. He has loads of information about the hundreds of millions of Facebook users around the world that he could do anything he wants with, but he respects peoples’ privacy by putting privacy settings that he recommends to use. He could even be richer than he is at the moment if he wanted to. He could easily add more advertisements to the site to increase his profits but he doesn’t because he’s not greedy or power-hungry. He is purely focused on working towards a better site to make world communication more open and so everyone can have the chance to post their opinions. Zuckerberg says himself that ‘It’s not because of the amount of money. For me and my colleagues, the most important thing is that we create an open information flow for people.’

Overall, Mark Zuckerberg is a good person. He only intended for it to help a small amount of people communicate but it became the colossal site it is today which has transformed the internet. He never meant for it to hurt anyone or to steal anyone’s ideas. He created the site because it’s what he loves doing and he wanted to help people communicate more.

“Zuckerberg didn’t need to wear a tie to convince someone he was an entrepreneur worth backing.”

So says David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect which tells Faceook’s journey from conception to becoming a legitimate business. Mark Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer and internet entrepreneur, he is best known for co-creating the social networking site Facebook which spans across all areas of the world. He is now the chief executive and president of this site.

As of 2011, at the age of 27, Zuckerberg is said have a personal wealth of over $17.5 billion, since his early days attending Ardsley High School, and then transferring to Harvard. He is continuously mentioned in the famous Forbes Magazine and website, with a rating of #40 in the list of most powerful people. Zuckerberg is a self made billionaire, with computer programming being his passion throughout his whole life. He started using computers at the age of 5 and was taught programming by his dad then later by a tutor who found it “difficult to keep up with him.” Mark was very interested in communicating over the internet and came up with a program which allowed all of the computers in his house to “ping” each other. In 2002, Mark enrolled into Harvard University, and that’s where it all began. Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room on February 4, 2004. Then called “thefacebook.com,” the site was an instant hit. Now, seven years later, the site has become one of the biggest web sites in the world, visited by 400 million people each month.

Since founding Facebook, he has had to prove himself over and over, as a leader, as a product manager, as a CEO. But, as always Mark continues to prove to everyone that he deserves his power and status. Ultimately, his power is expressed primarily through the strength of his product vision, and carried out through the voluntary cooperation of not more than 300 extremely talented and idealistic engineers. Mark has the power of controlling over 8 million people across the world. Despite the private settings that Facebook provides you with, Zuckerberg owns and can see all of what you put over Facebook, including photos and personal information.

The outcomes of Mark using his power is that it strikes up many debates as to whether Facebook should be allowed to own and see everything you expose over the internet, many people argue that Mark and Facebook both abuse people’s rights to personal privacy, even when there are privacy settings as an option. Although, there is only a minority of people around the globe who would agree with that argument, most humans have Facebook and don’t see any harm in it, because out of 8 million people, why would Mark choose to look at your information? As most people would agree, Mark Zuckerberg has used his computer programming expertise to influence everyone to communicate in other ways and to be more in touch with the people around them if they can’t get to them in some other way or form. Or in an act to just make everyone more social. Mark didn’t mean any harm in starting up this global phenomenon; he just wanted to share his passion with the rest of the universe.

Some say that Mark will eventually become corrupt due to having too much money at such a young age. First off; Mark doesn’t have that much money compared to others. He could have a lot more money right now if he sold even a fraction of this stock, but he has no use for it, preferring to spend all his time working on building his company rather than enjoy material wealth. Mark definitely has good intentions, he is using his technical ability to his advantage and at the same time, helping others to communicate in more ways than one, he is definitely not after fame or fortune, he is just a whiz kid who loves computer programming.